Christoph Thun-Hohenstein – författare

Kolo Moser was one of the most important universal artists in fin-de-siècle Vienna and is one of the leading representatives of Art Nouveau. His oeuvre includes painting, graphics, and crafts, as well as designs for fashion, lighting, and furniture, stage decoration, stained glass windows, book illustrations, and even banknotes. Blazing a trail for the art of his age, he was a founding member of the Vienna Secession and, together with the architect Josef Hoffmann and the industrialist Fritz Wärndorfer, he established the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903. The objective of this collective of fine artists was to realize the Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art at the highest caliber of arts and crafts. Some 400 objects, presented systematically and explained with essays, open up a new perspective on his impressive oeuvre.

Das Buch dokumentiert erstmals umfassend das Gesamtwerk Josef Hoffmanns. Als Wagner-Schüler, Gründungsmitglied der Wiener Secession ( 897), Professor an der Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule ( 899– 93 ), Mitbegründer der Wiener Werkstätte ( 9 3), des Deutschen Werkbundes ( 9 7) sowie des Österreichischen Werkbundes ( 9 2) kultivierte er ein Modell moderner Lebensweisen auf der Basis einer handwerklich geprägten, künstlerisch ambitionierten und gestalterisch avancierten Bau- und Produktkultur. Über 4 illustrierte Essays namhafter ExpertInnen zu den wichtigsten Bauten, Interieurs, Ausstellungen, kunstgewerblichen Entwürfen und Produkten stellen alle Sparten seines großen Œuvres dar. Großzügige Bildstrecken, eine detaillierte Biografie und ein umfassender Dokumentationsteil runden das Buch zu einem neuen Standardwerk ab.

Noch nie zuvor war die personliche Zukunft so sehr in die der Menschheit und die des Planeten eingebettet. Diesem Gedanken widmet sich der Autor - ebenso intellektuell wie leicht verstandlich. Mit groer Leidenschaft und personlicher Begeisterung entwirft er ein taugliches Konzept fur eine denkmogliche positive Zukunft im Zeitalter von Klimakatastrophen, kunstlicher Intelligenz und Demokratieverlust. Ein philosophisches Buch, das Antworten anbietet auf die Frage, wie eine solche Zukunft aussehen konnte. Ein Buch, das Mut weckt. Mut dafur, an der Verwirklichung einer lebenswerten Zukunft zu arbeiten und nicht nur davon zu traumen. Thun-Hohenstein sieht sich selbst als schreibenden Zukunftsdesigner. Mit seinem leidenschaftlichen Pladoyer legt er kein konventionelles Sachbuch vor. Er versucht dessen Grenzen zu uberschreiten und lehnt sich damit weit hinaus in die Zukunft.

Influenced by the currently very popular do-it-yourself movement, the contemporary design scene is increasingly shaped by a creative fusion of production and consumption. When it comes to the development of a self-made furniture culture, this book project combines for the first time design history research and consumerism theory with numerous historical and contemporary construction instructions and interior design recommendations. Across five chapters, design history and everyday culture are vividly and closely examined. What are their origins? Which media and channels are used to pass on experiences and practical instructions? Who exchanges in-formation with whom and under what circumstances? And what has changed since the advent of the era of digital modernity?

Otto Prutscher (1880-1949) was an architect and a designer in all applied arts media, as well as an exhibition designer, teacher and member of all the important arts and crafts movements, from the Secession to the Wiener Werkstätte and the Werkbund. The MAK - Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna - possesses a comprehensive graphic bequest and many significant objects from Prutscher's design oeuvre. Selected examples of Prutscher's creative work document his long-lasting influential role as a designer and artistic adviser for decorative art companies from Johann Loetz to Thonet. The publication conducts an audit of Prutscher's work as a pacemaker of Viennese modernism - over twenty years since the last show in Vienna and seventy years on from his death.Text in English and German.

Gestural sculptures formed in ceramics are the focus of Erwin Wurm: Dissolution. Wurm’s anthropomorphic ceramic sculptures, their forms oscillating between the ephemeral and the physical, are characterised by performative gestures. They affirm the inherent plasticity of the material clay, recalling the potency of bozzetti, in which artists from the Renaissance onwards were able to give direct expression to their innermost creative ideas. In Dissolution (2018–2020), Wurm sets out in search of a creative process that cannot be completely controlled. “Dissolution” has connotations of disintegration, decay, decomposition, and vanishing boundaries. The sculptures — with their protruding fingers, hands, lips, mouths, breasts, bellies, noses, and ears — force their way out of a clay mass.Text in English and German.

In his unique works Franz Josef Altenburg realised in clay the process of reduction and simplification that he had been pursuing systematically throughout his career. Combining the texture of the material with the order of his creations, the result is major series ranging from his Houses, Stairs, Pedestals, and Backdrops to his Blocks, Towers, Scaffolds, Containers, and Frames. With his expert mastery of handling and design techniques evident throughout the six decades of his oeuvre, Altenburg elevated ceramics into the realm of fine art.This book documents and analyses the artist, his work, and the site of his creativity in texts by art experts and a writer and offers for the very first time a comprehensive overview of his works, as well as an extensive illustrated biography with a list of exhibitions.Text in English and German.

Hello, Robot. Design Between Human and Machine investigates how robotics is becoming part of our everyday lives. The exhibitions shows that design in its traditional function as a mediator is indispensable if robots are to become a visible reality and not just remain hidden in washing machines, cars and cash machines. The volume clarifies where we already encounter these intelligent machines and where we may come across them in the near future: in industry, in the military and in everyday settings; at nurseries and retirement homes; in our bodies and in the cloud; when shopping and having sex; in video games and, of course, in film and literature. In a series of in-depth essays and interviews, experts such as the science fiction author Bruce Sterling and the design duo Dunne & Raby explore the question of how we deal with our environment becoming increasingly digital, smarter and more autonomous. They highlight our often ambivalent relationship to new technologies and discuss the opportunities and challenges that are posed to us as individuals and as a society in this context. In this regard, Hello, Robot. broadens the scope of the discussion to the ethical and political questions with which we are faced today in the light of technological advances in robotics, whilst confronting us with the contradictions that are often found in the answers to these questions.

Das Katalogbuch zur Ausstellung im MAK – Österreichischen Museum für angewandte Kunst / Gegenwarts-kunst in Wien beleuchtet zwei zentrale Denkweisen der Moderne in einer antithetischen Gegenüberstellung – samt Vorgeschichte und Nachwirkungen bis heute: Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) und Adolf Loos (1870–1933) repräsentieren konträre Reaktionen auf die Grundprobleme der modernen Zivilisation, die vom Industrialisierungs- und Demokratisierungsprozess ausgelöst wurden. So entstanden zwei Entwürfe für eine moderne Lebensweise: Hoffmann setzte auf eine umfassende Ästhetisierung aller Lebensbereiche, während Loos Architektur und Design als funktionalen Hintergrund für die Entfaltung individueller Persönlichkeiten interpretierte.Renommierte Fachautoren aus Europa und den USA untersuchen in 16 Essays ein breites Panorama der Vorbedingungen, Höhepunkte und Folgen dieser beiden Traditionen der Moderne vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. In vielen Abbildungen werden nicht nur die Hauptwerke von Hoffmann und Loos, sondern auch die ihrer Vorgänger wie Otto Wagner und Nachfolger wie Josef Frank illustriert.

Das Buch dokumentiert erstmals umfassend das Gesamtwerk Josef Hoffmanns. Als Wagner-Schüler, Gründungsmitglied der Wiener Secession ( 897), Professor an der Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule ( 899- 93 ), Mitbegründer der Wiener Werkstätte ( 9 3), des Deutschen Werkbundes ( 9 7) sowie des Österreichischen Werkbundes ( 9 2) kultivierte er ein Modell moderner Lebensweisen auf der Basis einer handwerklich geprägten, künstlerisch ambitionierten und gestalterisch avancierten Bau- und Produktkultur. Über 4 illustrierte Essays namhafter ExpertInnen zu den wichtigsten Bauten, Interieurs, Ausstellungen, kunstgewerblichen Entwürfen und Produkten stellen alle Sparten seines großen Œuvres dar. Großzügige Bildstrecken, eine detaillierte Biografie und ein umfassender Dokumentationsteil runden das Buch ab zu einem neuen Standard-Werk.

The catalog for the 2015/16 exhibition at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna is dedicated to Josef Frank (1885–1967), one of the most important Austrian architects of the 20th century. In addition to his groundbreaking architectural work, the catalog focuses his design, which remains highly influential to this day. As an architect and designer, Frank remains contemporary, having promoted a pragmatic approach to design that focused less on formal qualities and more on those of social experience. Frank's ideal of an unaffected and unpretentious practicality, aimed at an independent and sophisticated bourgeois culture of living beyond stylistic dogmas and fashionable conventions, seems more relevant than ever.